April Rector’s Message
Holy Week contains some of the oldest practices of Christian gatherings. Practices of prayer and song and scripture and fellowship that the faithful have practiced in times of peacefulness and plague and war. There are moments from these devotional weeks that stand out powerfully in my heart and memory. What are your strong memories of Holy Week and the festival of Easter? Is it the jarring shouts on Palm Sunday, the truth-telling of Shadows, or a rush of the Spirit at Easter? The early church didn’t need studies to tell them that stories are data with soul, and the whole point of the ways in which we worship is to immerse people in the story so deeply that it changes the community story. These are becoming who and what we say we intend to be: people who are rising from the worst, of letting go of resentment and distance and finding the forgiveness we are offered in Jesus for each other. So even if you think you have heard and seen it all before, come and see anyways.
“John’s Gospel says in the 20th chapter, early in the morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene and some of the other women went to the tomb…They went to the tomb when it didn’t make any sense. They went to the tomb when the evidence was against them. Jesus was dead. They knew that. The power of the Empire had crushed the hope of love. They knew that. And they got up in the morning and went to the tomb anyhow. Hallelujah, Anyhow.” -Presiding Bishop Curry, 2019
It is a strange thing to be planning for this Holy Week here, my third here, but the first one with any sense of ease from the pandemic. It is strange to come into Holy Week more than just a bit tired from all the everything of the last two years and the news of the world right now. However, the people who were closest to Jesus, who followed him into Jerusalem and to the cross, they must have been exhausted. No text says that is so, but how could they not be. But they got up and kept following Jesus anyways. I hope that you will too.
On April 3rd we will begin to have encouraged but not required masking at all services for fully vaccinated persons. Masking is still strongly encouraged as an act of care for neighbor and self when singing or after exposure, they will no longer be required. However, enthusiastic singing expels around three times as much stuff from deep inside your throat and lungs, it pulls it from much deeper inside, and that stuff goes twice as far; and that is only the outgoing. We inhale approximately twice as much air filled with particles as well. As a priest and professional singer said to me – those germs are just looking for a fun place to land, and singing is a party. I plan to continue to mask while singing for a while, and I encourage all of you to do so as well. You are free to not mask when not singing, and wear it when you are. Even with a mask, we can sing alleluia anyhow!
Our plans for Holy Week and Easter will have occasions that do and do not have singing indoors, and many of our Holy Week services will be both on-site and live-streamed. Our commitment to moral living and mutual responsibility in Christ means that our neighbor’s vulnerability is ours as well. Masking when our neighbor needs to is a sign of solidarity and a Christ-like heart of humility. Thank you to the staff, the choir, the altar guild, and all who help bring our life together into being. It has been a long hard journey, but, Hallelujah, anyways.